


The Brilliant Green

by hereticalvision



Series: Harry Potter Horror [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark, Dark Harry Potter, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Family, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Incest, M/M, Multi, Past Abuse, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:28:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27329554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hereticalvision/pseuds/hereticalvision
Summary: On a perfectly ordinary Thursday night, Harry Potter receives a call at three a.m. to be told that one of his sons is dead and the other in a coma – but that’s only the beginning of the worst night of his life. Because as he investigates the death, Harry will find out things about his sons no father should have to face.
Relationships: Albus Severus Potter/James Sirius Potter
Series: Harry Potter Horror [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1986185
Comments: 6
Kudos: 40





	The Brilliant Green

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by Jodi Picoult’s The Pact with a twist of Under Suspicion, and written to the soothing sounds of Zoey van Goey. Written for NextGenDarkFest 2010. Re-beta by FIctionalist. 
> 
> I've tried to warn for the big stuff but can't promise the list is exhaustive. Bear in mind it was written for a dark fic fest, is the darkest thing I've ever written but those who liked it loved it. The back button is the safe word.

In many ways this was a night like any other, the two of them at the shack.  
  
But this night someone else was there. Someone heard the sighs and saw the sweat.  
  
There was a cry, a thud, a struggle.  
  
And then there was a flash of brilliant green...  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
Harry was at home when the call came. He’d come in from the office late, a bad habit he found himself falling into whenever the Ministry changed its policies. Ginny usually let him get away with it for a week or so before coming to fetch him home, sometimes with soft caresses and sometimes with a strident determination that Harry still found sexy after twenty-odd years of marriage. But tonight she was away, covering a friendly match in Italy, so Harry was doing his paperwork at the kitchen table – another bad habit that filled the time when Ginny was absent and he couldn’t sleep.  
  
When the fireplace roared at three a.m. and Ron’s voice came through, Harry knew immediately that whatever had happened must have been bad – and personal. Harry knew Ron too, too well to mistake the edge in his voice or to misinterpret the significance of Ron’s calling him _mate_ when he needed to talk Auror business. Harry walked over to the fireplace, heart already sinking, and fell to his knees.  
  
“What is it, Ron?”  
  
“Mate,” Ron said again. “Mate, it’s bad.” He swallowed and Harry could tell that this was hard for him, impossibly hard. And then Ron said the words Harry had never thought to dread, words that had fuelled his nightmares when he had first become a father but which he’d never truly believed he would hear: “It’s bad, and it’s about James and Albus.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
“Malfoy, Scorpius.”  
  
“RAVENCLAW!”  
  
Al met Rose’s eyes and glanced at James, who shrugged. For all that Uncle Ron had said about the Malfoys, it was Dad’s words about bravery that Al thought of. Your house didn’t really define you, Dad had said, and that had to be true, didn’t it?  
  
Al knew his time was coming soon. The queue of first years kept growing shorter; there were only two students between Malfoy and Potter, and Al barely heard their names being called, so intent was he on not making a fool of himself, not tripping on his robes or panicking visibly.  
  
James caught his eye again, but this time, for the first time, there was no mockery in the look. There was instead something Al saw sometimes in his Dad’s eyes: confidence in Al without the overbearing weight of expectation. James was telling him that he could do this, that it was all going to be all right, and what James told him Al always believed.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
Harry emerged from the morgue feeling as though he was going to be sick. No parent should have to identify the body of a son.  
  
“Looks like it was quick,” said Kingsley quietly. “No sign of cruciatus, just...”  
  
“Just _Avada Kedavra_ ,” Harry finished for him. Dimly he recognised that Kingsley was trying to comfort him, that his presence here at all was a testament to their long-standing relationship. But he really wished Kingsley would just stop talking.  
  
“Who would do this?” Hermione burst out. “Why would anyone...?” She couldn’t finish. Ron reached out to her, but didn’t move from where he stood with his hand on Harry’s shoulder. As the Deputy Minister for Magic Harry knew she, too, didn’t have to be there but he was so grateful she was, both she and Ron.  
  
“What about-?” he began but Ron immediately began to answer.  
  
“St Mungo’s. Had to be sedated. Should we take you to him now?”  
  
_Yes,_ Harry wanted to say. _Yes, let me see him, let me see him now and know that he’s still alive, that whoever did this didn’t get both of them._ But he’d already postponed telling Ginny until he’d seen this with his own eyes and it was time now to tell her. “I should tell Ginny first.”  
  
Ron nodded. “I’ll do it.”  
  
“No,” Harry stopped him. “No, I should do it. I should be the one who tells her...” Again, his voice gave out.  
  
Kingsley cleared his throat. “I’ll clear the international Portkey. If you’d like to send someone to get her...”  
  
Harry had started to shake his head already but Hermione pre-empted him. “Harry, you’re needed here.”  
  
Harry swallowed hard. He couldn’t stop thinking about his boys, his beautiful boys broken. But he couldn’t think like a father now. He was Head Auror and there was a murderer loose somewhere. He nodded a few times to steady himself. “Send someone to bring her here – I’ll tell her when she comes.”  
  
Kingsley nodded and with a _crack_ he was gone.  
  
Harry turned. “Ron, do we know what the hell happened?”  
  
Ron shook his head. “The guys went there because someone’s Trace was set off. They didn’t expect to find...” He swallowed. “There was no one else there as far as they could tell. But they’ve secured the Shrieking Shack now; they’re going over it with a fine tooth comb looking for any magical traces but the Shrieking Shack’s got piles of enchantments built up over the years so...”  
  
“Keep them looking,” Harry said. “And the surrounding area, of course. Firecall someone at Hogwarts, I want Neville and Susan in here, both of them, see if they can think of any reason why...” the name caught in his throat, he swallowed. “Why the boys would have been there,” he finished instead. “I want to have some background on this, and there’s no guarantee that...” Harry’s voice broke again.  
  
“He will wake up, Harry,” Ron told him. “He was in shock but he wasn’t hurt. He’s going to be fine.”  
  
“But he might not be coherent for a while,” said Hermione. “This would be hard for anyone – and they’ve never seen death, not like this...”  
  
Harry found himself oddly comforted by the knowledge that he had done that much; by the time he had turned eighteen he’d seen almost everyone he’d ever loved cut down before his eyes, but James and Al had been spared that.  
  
Had it been for the best, though? Had he wanted to protect them so badly that he’d prevented them from learning to protect themselves? Was that why...?  
  
“The first death is the hardest,” Ron said, mercifully interrupting Harry’s thoughts. “And it’s his brother to boot.” The reminder of Fred made Harry cringe. Ron knew better than anyone how this must feel; Hermione put her hand on his shoulder.  
  
“The last thing we’ll want to do when he wakes up is interrogate him,” Ron went on. “Not right away. Harry’s right, let’s get on this now.”  
  
Harry knew he wasn’t right, not really, that all the questions might be answered within hours and this might be a waste of time. But he had to know something was being done.  
  
It was relief when Neville came through the door.  
  
“Harry!” Neville said, round face worried and tired. “Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  


Neville stood outside the Hospital Wing speaking in an undertone. “A first year and a second year to do something like this - we don’t even know how they got out of the castle or, more importantly, why they were in the Forbidden Forest. But James was badly injured and Al won’t say anything or even let go of his hand.”  
  
Harry interrupted him, “How badly was James hurt?”  
  
Neville swallowed hard. “Mostly bruises, a gash on his cheek, couple of cuts on his back and below – it looks like Al tried to heal him and made some of it worse.”  
  
Ginny, clasping Harry’s hand for dear life, said, “Is he going to be all right?”  
  
Neville nodded. “Yes, nothing irreparable was done. And whatever it was, it looks like James managed to keep it away from Al – you should be proud of him.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “Al knows better than to try advanced healing spells. I mean, yes, I taught them both some basics over the years, but Al’s only in first year.”  
  
Neville nodded again. “I don’t think you need to worry, Harry. James wasn’t hurt nearly as badly as you were, always coming off that broom of yours. They’re more scared than anything else. Al was really afraid that James was seriously hurt, kept saying he blames himself.” Neville sighed. “I thought you’d want to talk to him.”  
  
“Right,” Harry said, squeezing Ginny’s hand. He didn’t think she’d heard much of what Neville had said after his assurance that James would be all right. She met his gaze, and though her lip trembled a little her expression was determined. Harry knew again how much he loved her and squeezed her hand once more. Together they entered the room.  
  
As Neville had said, Al was holding onto James’ hand and leaning over him as he lay there, unconscious. Al looked frighteningly pale, his brilliant green eyes huge as though he’d been awake and afraid for days, not just overnight. Dropping Ginny’s hand, Harry placed his own on Al’s shoulder, letting Ginny walk around the bed to rest her fingers on James’ forehead.  
  
“Hi, Al,” Harry said.  
  
Al looked at him and his eyes were empty. “Dad,” he said woodenly, as though the word had lost all meaning.  
  
“Al, you need to get some rest,” Harry said gently.  
  
“I’ll rest when James tells me I can rest,” Al said, dropping his gaze back to his brother.  
  
Ginny caught Harry’s eye. “Al, your father’s right,” she said, injecting her tone with a hint of sternness even though Harry was sure she was fighting the urge to smother Al as her own mother would have done.  
  
Al looked from Ginny to Harry and said, “He got hurt because of me. He was there because he was looking for me. He let that thing hurt him to keep it away from me. So I’m not going to leave here until he tells me I can leave.”  
  
Harry and Ginny looked at one another again. Al was obviously taking this just as hard as Neville had warned. Harry tried again, “Al...”  
  
And without warning Al was on his feet and glaring at his father. “I am not _leaving him!_ ” Al spat. “I might have been so weak that he had to get hurt but I can be strong enough to stay with him, so – DON’T YOU TOUCH HIM!” Al shouted suddenly as the matron, whose name Harry could never remember, came in and reached for James’ wrist.  
  
All the adults stood stunned. Al’s expression was suddenly murderous.  
  
“I’m here to help him, Potter,” said the matron – Madam Lefroy, that was it – her tone much gentler than Harry would have expected.  
  
“I have to help him,” Al said, and that would be the last thing anyone would get out of him until James woke the next day.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
“You got here fast, Neville. I was just about to ask Ron to get you...”  
  
Ron cleared his throat. “I should go down to the school anyway.” He nodded at Neville, kissed Hermione’s cheek, and headed off to find a fireplace.  
  
When Harry turned back to Neville he was giving his usual shy, self-effacing smile. “I left as soon as I checked on the other Gryffindors,” he said. “I assumed you’d want to talk to me. I, er,” Neville sighed. “I left Lily sleeping for now. I thought –“  
  
“You did right,” Harry assured him. He sighed and indicated the chairs a little way down the corridor; they began to walk. Hermione made to follow, but when Harry asked her quietly if she could find them some tea, she made nothing like the protest about sexism he might have expected and merely nodded.  
  
Neville looked pretty drained. He was always the one giving bad news, it seemed. The job of a head of House, Harry supposed. He could sympathise.  
  
There were endless questions in Harry’s head – how did they get out of the castle _again_ , how had they got themselves hurt _again_. The first time, they’d used the Marauder’s Map, but after what had happened, Harry had taken it away and locked it in his safe. He still remembered Al’s screaming insistence on protecting James and Ginny waiting four whole days before she finally let go and shouted at James and Al both for their idiocy, and how they’d both been more cowed by her anger than Harry would ever have expected.  
  
Neville and Harry sat.  
  
“What can you tell me, Neville?” Harry said, falling back on the tried and tested technique of letting someone tell him what they thought was important first, before asking questions that might be based on false assumptions.  
  
Neville chewed his lip for a moment. He’d been the leader of Dumbledore’s Army after all; he knew what kind of information Harry would need. “If you’re looking for a reason why they would have been out there, I don’t know. They’ve barely a broken a rule between them since that time James got hurt – or at least,” he grimaced, “they haven’t been caught.”  
  
Harry nodded. After that night it was almost as though Al and James had switched personalities, with Al becoming the boisterous, stronger one and James the quiet, withdrawn one. Ginny had sent them for counselling when it became clear that the things weren’t just going to go back to normal, but it just made James resentful and quiet instead of abstracted and quiet.  
  
“And I know you were worried about how James seemed to pull into himself after that, but Al always looked out for him and honestly I thought everything was all right. But then...” Neville hesitated.  
  
“Yes?” Harry prompted.  
  
Neville sighed. “I’ve never known Al quite as well as James, what with his being...”  
  
“In Hufflepuff, I understand,” Harry said.  
  
“Right. But a few months ago Susan came and asked me if James was doing ok. Seems like Al had started to get quiet, seemed distracted in class, tired all the time.” Neville shrugged. “Susan can tell you more about how Al was doing I guess, but I know he didn’t confide in her. And the thing of it is, James was actually starting to come out of his shell more than I’d seen in years.”  
  
“Yeah,” Harry nodded, remembering Christmas. Sure, Al had been quiet, but Harry had just been so relieved to see glimmers of the old James that he hadn’t paid quite as much attention as he once had. Al had always been Harry’s favourite but it was James who’d been a bigger worry.  
  
_Don’t think about this now_ , he reminded himself as the pain of loss threatened to wreck his concentration once again.  
  
“I don’t know if maybe Al was in some kind of trouble and that’s why they were at the Shack,” Neville said, his voice softening as he clearly saw the turmoil on Harry’s face. “Maybe he held off asking James for help, maybe James followed him there.”  
  
“Too many maybes,” Harry sighed. He was exhausted; it was four in the morning, he hadn’t slept, his worst nightmare had come true and he was trying to be a logical Auror about it all. But what else could he do? There was no way he’d be able to sleep.  
  
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Neville said. “I just... they must have gone there to meet someone, right?”  
  
Harry nodded, not in agreement but simply to signal that he was thinking it through. “Did anything happen today or tonight that would make you think, in retrospect, that something unusual was going on?”  
  
Neville thought hard. “I don’t know. I mean, I taught James’ class today but not Al’s. I saw them at meals – Al sat alone at dinner, but that’s not too unusual when James is sitting with the other Prefects.”  
  
“Did either of them get an owl in the morning?”  
  
It was clear from Neville’s face that he couldn’t remember. Harry felt a bubble rising in his throat, a terrible fury that would make him scream things like _they’re my sons, why weren’t you paying attention, why didn’t you notice, why didn’t you know everything about them, you’re their teacher,_ but that was so far from fair that Harry forced himself to choke it down.  
  
“Right,” Harry nodded. “Er, and after dinner?”  
  
Neville shook his head. “We don’t usually check on the students after hours, especially the older students. I mean, the seventh years are almost all of age anyway.”  
  
“Of age,” Harry repeated slowly, something almost sparking. “Neville, when did you know something was wrong?”  
  
“The Headmistress called us all to her office. It was Ron who told us,” Neville said. “Said he’d found... the boys,” he concluded with a glimpse at Harry’s face, “and asked us to check the school.”  
  
“Which you did?”  
  
“We all went to our Houses, but after looking in on Lily I asked Pomona to cover for me so I could come here.”  
  
Hermione had reappeared, three cups of tea bobbing along in the air beside her. Harry turned to her at once: “Hermione, Ron said the reason an Auror went down to the Shrieking Shack was to check on a use of underage magic.”  
  
“Yes,” Hermione said. And then he saw it hit her. “But James and Al...”  
  
“Are both of age,” Harry finished for her. “So who else was down there?”  
  
He turned to Neville. “I need to know if any of the students are missing. I need to know _right now_.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Scorpius didn’t think of it as a crush at first. He just thought Al was interesting. The way he’d get protective of his brother if he thought someone was bothering him was really nice. Al was just _nice_ , though friendly would be the wrong word. Oh, he’d lend you his class notes in a heartbeat, give you a quill if you lost yours, do anything for anyone who asked but he never engaged. He never really made conversation. And Scorpius actually appreciated that about him. Scorpius himself was just coming to terms with the fact that the boys in the showers after Quidditch interested him a lot more than any girl no matter how pretty her hair or how curvy her body, and was doing his best not to draw attention to himself – and he wondered a little if Al was in the same boat.  
  
That was when he started looking a little more. Al wasn’t an amazing looking bloke exactly – his hair was always messy and his robes often weren’t pressed quite right, and it wasn’t until Scorpius had had reason to ask him for a loan of a quill that he’d looked into Al’s eyes and realised how beautiful they were.  
  
So Scorpius, blushing a little, had tried to get to know him.  
  
“My Mum used to play Gobstones when she was in school,” he said. “She often asks me why I had to play Quidditch like Father instead.”  
  
Al had looked at him like he didn’t quite know what to make of it. They were partners in Potions class but their conversations usually stayed safely on schoolwork.  
  
“I never played Gobstones,” Al said. “Do you think an anti-clockwise stir would help here?”  
  
“Not sure. What did you like then?” Scorpius persisted. “When you were a kid, I mean?”  
  
Al shrugged. “I was the quiet type I suppose. I liked drawing sometimes.”  
  
Scorpius immediately imagined Al as a sensitive artist. That explained it.  
  
“But I don’t really bother anymore,” Al finished.  
  
“Oh,” said Scorpius rather lamely.  
  
Al eyed him for a minute. “You looking for someone to play Gobstones with?”  
  
Perfect! “Maybe,” he said casually.  
  
“My sister’s in the club, I’ll let her know,” Al said, ruining Scorpius’ hopes.  
  
Two days later he’d tried to find Al in the library. He was sitting with James and when Scorpius approached, James had eyeballed him and flicked Al a glance.  
  
“Yes, Malfoy?” said Al.  
  
Scorpius looked from one Potter to the other. Al never acted this imperious. What was this?  
  
“I was going to ask if I could sit with you?” he said quietly.  
  
James snorted slightly.  
  
“Not right now, we’re a little busy,” Al said. His expression softened a little when he said, “Later, Malfoy,” but that was it; Scorpius was dismissed.  
  
It was the first time Al had been rude to him.  
  
But after that it was business as usual – school-centric conversation measured out by the period. Scorpius tried again a few times to start a real conversation, but he never seemed to get anywhere. Al would eat with James or Lily or both at most meals, sat with his house even though he didn’t seem to have proper friends there, and remained cool and aloof, though never outright unfriendly the way he had been in the library that time.  
  
Scorpius grew more and more obsessed with trying to break through his reserve. But every time he even got close, James would appear and summon Al with a jerk of the head he never refused.  
  
Scorpius hated him for that.  
  
Until one beautiful autumn Saturday when Scorpius was sitting in the courtyard reading with his Ravenclaw scarf tightly around his neck. He felt like a bit of a cliché, but he didn’t really feel like doing much else, and Quidditch practice had left him worn out with company.  
  
Al walked through the courtyard, so flustered he nearly crashed straight into a tree. Scorpius blinked in surprise at the usually unflappable Al so wound up, and he called out, “Potter! You all right?”  
  
Al’s face was so white. “No,” he said before he ran – literally ran, from the courtyard back into the castle.  
  
Scorpius watched him go, a little slack-jawed, and decided right then that whatever was wrong with Al, he had to help him.  
  
  


  
  
**Now**  
  
Ron had gone to Malfoy Manor; Harry didn’t trust himself not to tear the place apart if Draco tried to dissemble for even a moment. Any other time he might have sympathised with Draco’s inevitable fear as the Aurors came for another member of his family, but at this moment he honestly didn’t care.  
  
Hermione had come with him to the Auror office. Now she sat opposite him, calmly pointing out that this proved nothing: the Trace told them that Scorpius had performed an Apparition, nothing else.  
  
Harry raged, “Then he used another wand! Or he took someone else there! He knows something, Hermione, he knows _something_...”  
  
“Harry,” Hermione said, eyes filling with tears, “Harry, I know it’s awful, I know...”  
  
“You don’t know!” Harry lashed out. “Rose and Hugo are safe!”  
  
Hermione inhaled sharply, her face turning red as though she would begin crying in earnest, and oh, what was he _doing_ talking to her like this when probably the only thing she wanted to do right now was check on her own children and make sure they were safe, safe and real in her arms.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said, uselessly. “Hermione, I’m so...”  
  
“It’s all right,” she said though it plainly wasn’t. Mercifully, that was when Ron arrived.  
  
“He’s in the interrogation room,” Ron said. “Scared sh- er, witless. I think he did see something, Harry, something that really scared him. But Malfoy told him not to say anything. I don’t know what we’re going to get out of him.”  
  
More than twenty years and Draco was still _Malfoy_ to Ron. “I’m going in there,” Harry said.  
  
Immediately Ron and Hermione both started voicing their protests - _conflict of interest, bad idea mate_ \- but he wasn’t in any state to hear them.  
  
He closed the door behind him as he entered the room, pretty sure that Ron was already off to find Kingsley and get him pulled out of here. Better work fast then.  
  
“Scorpius,” Harry said.  
  
The boy didn’t even look at him. He was curled up into a tight ball on the chair, his knees pulled in hard against his chest, arms wrapped around them, face pressed into his knees.  
  
“Scorpius!” Harry said, harsher this time.  
  
The body jerked a little as though flinching away from the sound.  
  
Harry forced himself to remember being sixteen and afraid. Of course, by the time he’d been sixteen he’d already been through so much fear that fear barely frightened him. Scorpius was different.  
  
“Scorpius, I need to know what happened tonight,” Harry said as gently as he could. “I need to know.”  
  
The pointed shoulders began to shake; Harry thought at first Scorpius was sobbing, but then a strangled laugh emerged. Harry felt fury flash through his veins until Scorpius raised his head and Harry could see that he had indeed been crying. His face was red and swollen, and the eyes he raised to Harry’s had none of his father’s cool detachment. Scorpius was looking at him with eyes that held no hope, no life. Harry was reminded inexorably of Al at James’ bedside all those years ago, and swallowed hard.  
  
Scorpius was speaking, “You’ll never believe me.” Despite the hysteria obvious in the laugh moments before, his voice now was perfectly cool and coherent.  
  
Harry breathed out slowly. “Scorpius, please.”  
  
“My father knows you,” Scorpius said, talking more to himself it seemed though the words were definitely directed at Harry. “He told me not to be friends with Al, said the Potters were all self-righteous and twisted up inside and they never believe they can do any wrong. You won’t believe anything I say.”  
  
Harry forced himself to remain calm. “Scorpius, I know you saw something. My son is dead, Scorpius...”  
  
“I didn’t do it! I didn’t even see what happened!”  
  
“Then WHY DID YOU RUN?” Harry exploded. He couldn’t help himself – in a second he was across the room and shaking those skinny, pitiful shoulders, determined to get the truth from this boy, this boy who knew what had happened and just wouldn’t tell him. “IF THE LAST TIME YOU SAW THEM THEY WERE FINE, WHY DID YOU _RUN_?”  
  
Someone was yelling, someone was pulling him off Scorpius, someone was screaming and Harry wasn’t sure it wasn’t him.  
  
“WHY DID YOU RUN?” he demanded again and again as he was dragged out of the room, Scorpius’ terrified face the only thing he could see.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Al looked at himself in the mirror. There were bite marks on his neck, bruise-purple marks under his eyes revealing how hard he was finding it to sleep, a terrible awareness in his eyes. Al looked at himself and looked at himself and started to retch a little into the sink.  
  
“Ooh,” said a female voice. “You look just awful.”  
  
Al spun around to see a ghost half-in, half-out of the wall behind him. He’d chosen this bathroom because no one ever used it.  
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t–” Al choked out.  
  
“It’s all right,” said the ghost soothingly. “I used to cry in here, too.”  
  
Myrtle, Al remembered. Perfect. He turned back to the sink and splashed cold water onto his face, before charming away the marks on his neck. “Better?” he asked Myrtle dully.  
  
“A bit,” she conceded. She tilted her head. “You look a lot like Harry, you know. He used to visit me sometimes. And I used to see him in the Prefect’s bathroom.”  
  
Al’s mouth quirked involuntarily at the corner. “You used to watch my Dad in the bath?”  
  
“Oh yes,” Myrtle said blithely. “Until that day he nearly killed someone. It was right, here, actually, and the boy looked a lot like - _him_!” she said suddenly, and Al turned to find Scorpius Malfoy behind him.  
  
Scorpius held out his palms, hands up. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I was just...”  
  
“Spying?” Al snapped. “You’re always spying, hanging around and...”  
  
“I know something’s wrong,” Scorpius said quietly. “I know, and I just wish you’d talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me, but your sister maybe or...”  
  
“You don’t know anything, Malfoy,” Al said, brushing past him, but instead of the intended next sentence of _nothing’s wrong_ what came out was, “No one can help me.”  
  
  
**Now**  
  
“You aren’t going back in that room,” Ron said flatly, tone brooking no opposition.  
  
“I’m all right now,” Harry said. “I just–”  
  
“Attacked a witness too afraid to speak, thereby scaring him further?” Kingsley boomed. “No, Potter. Absolutely not. You will wait until your son wakes up and then...”  
  
“No!” Harry cried. “No, no way, the killer’s still out there somewhere, we need to...”  
  
“I’ll talk to him,” Ron said. “Believe it or not he seems to find my presence less intimidating than yours. So let me try.”  
  
Kingsley’s jaw tightened. “I think you’re still too close to this, Weasley.”  
  
Ron looked at him. “I think I’m just close enough, sir.”  
  
“Let him do it,” Harry said, breaking the tension. “Please. If not me, then Ron.”  
  
Kingsley nodded slowly.  
  
“I need to watch,” Harry said, knowing he was pushing his luck.  
  
Kingsley shook his head. “You need to go and be with your son, Potter, that is what you need to do. Go back to St. Mungo’s, we’ll call you when we get somewhere.”  
  
So Harry did what he was told for once. Nothing to do but go back to the hospital and trudge up to the ward. He wasn’t allowed in the room yet, so he simply stood staring through the half-curtained window.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
“Dad,” said Al. “How many people did you know who died?”  
  
Harry looked at him, surprised. “Hell of a topic for Christmas, son.”  
  
Al huffed out a small laugh. “Yeah, I know. But I was just wondering. I mean, Teddy’s parents and your old teachers, so many of them, and all those people you knew from school...”  
  
“I don’t know how many,” Harry said quietly. “I don’t think of them like that. They were people. There was this kid Colin – the age you are now. He used to annoy the hell out of me – followed me around taking pictures, acting like a stalker. But he grew out of it. Joined the DA. And then he died.” Harry swallowed hard. “I wasn’t even close to him, but I still think about him sometimes.”  
  
Al shifted. “What about his family?”  
  
Harry didn’t like thinking about this. “He had a younger brother, I remember that. Dennis.”  
  
“Was he ok in the end?”  
  
“Yes,” Harry lied. “He got through it.”  
  
Dennis Creevey had hunted down the Death Eater who killed his brother, killed him and then himself. Harry eyed Al, tense on the windowsill, and wondered for a moment who exactly Al was afraid of losing. He’d noticed the slump in his son’s shoulders and patted his arm.  
  
“Life just goes on,” Al mused, half-smiling in a way that made Harry's skin crawl. "For everyone else, life just goes on."  
  


  
  
**Now**  
  
Harry stared until he couldn’t bear it anymore, then took himself back to the Auror office. Kingsley sighed when he saw him, but Harry had gone from furious to spent and Kingsley could apparently sense the difference in him.  
  
“All right, Potter,” Kingsley said. “But I’ll be watching with you.”  
  
“Ron’s still in with him?” Harry asked, wondering just how long it would take to calm Scorpius after what he’d done. Self-loathing coiled into his belly and for a moment Harry felt ashamed.  
  
Kingsley nodded. “The boy is adamant that no one will believe what he has to say. He has actually demanded that we give him Veritaserum before we question him so that we won’t doubt his word.”  
  
Harry was shocked – Veritaserum was so intrusive that having someone _volunteer_ to take it was practically unheard of.  
  
“Exactly what I thought,” Kingsley said, watching Harry’s face.  
  
Harry watched Roberts walk down the hall – he was a runner for the Aurors, a junior who fetched and carried for the department. “I take it he has...”  
  
“The potion, yes,” said Kingsley. “Let’s go in.”  
  
To the side of the interrogation room was an observation point, from which Harry and Kingsley could watch and listen - though of course the wall looked solid from the other side.  
  
Scorpius had uncurled a little. He still had his arms around his knees, but he’d raised his head. Ron was talking to him softly, asking if he was sure he wanted to do this, if he wanted his father present since he was not yet of age, if he could please sign the waiver acknowledging that he’d been informed of all of his rights. Scorpius answered yes, no, fine, and then greedily gulped down the liquid Roberts proffered.  
  
“No way around this, right?” Scorpius said. “You have to believe me now.”  
  
“We’ll believe you, Scorpius,” Ron said, solid as a rock, the way Harry knew him to be. “Now what did you see?”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Scorpius knew Al was in trouble, knew it somewhere deep in his bones. Al looked like he wasn’t sleeping, not ever. Not to mention what he had said that last time they spoke. But his bloody brother wouldn’t let Scorpius anywhere near him.  
  
Then Scorpius heard from Rose Weasley that Al was roaming the halls late at night instead of staying in his dorm or even his common room. So Scorpius started roaming as well.  
  
But it wasn’t actually Al he saw as he walked around, Disillusioned. It was James, taller and heavier and just as Potter-ish. Scorpius had wondered about him sometimes – Al had said things that made him wonder– and so Scorpius followed him. He tried to stay far enough behind that James wouldn’t notice him, but James seemed pretty intent. Scorpius wondered just what was going on, but he knew something wasn’t right and this might be his only chance to work out what.  
  
James was moving quickly as though he was worried about being late. Scorpius followed him out of the castle and watched him immobilise that violent tree on the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Wondering where the hell they were going, Scorpius slipped after him until eventually he found the entrance to the tunnel. James had quite a lead by then, but the tunnel was comfortingly straight, no twists and turns to get lost in.  
  
Scorpius eventually found himself in an old, half-rotting building with a few old pieces of furniture around. He heard voices in one of the rooms upstairs, voices that sounded like they were arguing, and so he sneaked up the stairs.  
  
“Al,” Scorpius heard James’ voice. “Oh, God, Al.”  
  
The tone was so odd that Scorpius couldn’t figure out what it meant. And so he put his eye to the door.  
  
At first he thought they were just hugging, he was witnessing just comfort between brothers. But James was pulling at Al’s robes. And as Scorpius watched, James bit down on his brother’s collarbone, making him gasp. Al’s fingers tightened reflexively in James’ hair; James growled low in his throat and bit down harder, fingers working their way beneath Al’s robes.  
  
James and Al rutting against each other. James and Al, the Potter brothers, fucking in this dirty little shack. James and Al. James and _Al_.  
  
And it made so much sense now, Al’s silence and conflict, James’ ability to summon or silence Al with a look, a mere flicker of the eye, and Scorpius had been so obvious with his pathetic little crush and God, God, _God_ look at them.  
  
And Scorpius didn’t care about anything anymore, couldn’t watch, couldn’t make sense of it, all he could do was run and run and run with the sound of his blood rushing through his ears, running out into the darkness of the forest. He wasn’t even aware he’d Apparated – something his father had taught him and forbidden him to do – until he was home, at Malfoy Manor, and he’d woken his father and was crying great screaming sobs into his chest as though he were six years old again, but he wasn’t and this wasn’t something his father could fix, wasn’t something anyone could ever, ever fix.  
  
  


**Now**  
  
Harry couldn’t have made a sound if his life depended on it.  
  
Ron looked like he was about to be sick. “You are telling me you saw Al and James kissing?”  
  
“Kissing, touching each other, they were lovers,” Scorpius said, the hurt of it reverberating through his words.  
  
“And that’s why you ran away.”  
  
“Yes. I didn’t know what to do so I ran.”  
  
“They didn’t hear you? They didn’t follow you?”  
  
Harry turned to Kingsley. “This isn’t... This can’t be...” It had to be a mistake, Polyjuice, some strange practical joke, something...  
  
“In a minute, Potter,” Kingsley said in the kindest tone Harry had ever heard from him.  
  
“I don’t think so,” Scorpius said. “They were too wrapped up in each other.” His tone was bitter.  
  
Ron raised his head. “You were jealous.”  
  
“Yes.” Scorpius hadn’t wanted to say that. Now the Veritaserum was doing its job, now they were getting answers to the difficult questions.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Scorpius was fighting himself not to answer, but the potion forced out the words. “I liked Al. The whole reason I was there was because I liked Al. I wanted to help him, I wanted...”  
  
“To use him?” came Ron’s question. It was as though Ron hadn’t heard anything Scorpius had said before – he was focusing on the parts he could understand before trying to make sense of the horror.  
  
“No!” Scorpius burst out. “I just wanted to know him.” And then his voice turned soft. “I thought he was beautiful.”  
  
Ron leaned forward. “That’s motive, you know.”  
  
Scorpius replied, “I didn’t kill anyone. I’m telling you right now, now when you have to believe me, they were fucking all right but I didn’t want to kill him!”  
  
Harry couldn’t bear this, couldn’t listen to any more, couldn’t leave.  
  
Ron was persisting. “You hated him at that moment, didn’t you? You hated them both?”  
  
Scorpius just looked at him. “I’ve taken Veritaserum, Auror Weasley,” he said, exhausted. “Don’t you have faith in your own potion brewers?”  
  
“Come away, Harry,” Kingsley said softly. “He didn’t do it. Come away.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
James knew he relied a little too much on Al, but it had become habit. Al could always tell someone to go away when James didn’t have the strength but needed to be left alone. Al was always willing to help him when he hadn’t been concentrating in class, and hadn’t quite caught what was meant by a particular passage. Al was the only one who made James feel like he was doing something more than just sleepwalking through his life.  
  
James hadn’t understood quite why Al was always there until recently. Of course they were brothers, and there was that thing they never talked about, but James knew Al could have been popular if he hadn’t spent all of his time looking after James, the idiot brother.  
  
And as gratitude often does, James felt it turn to resentment.  
  
“Why are you always here?” he threw at his brother one Saturday morning when they were studying in the structure formerly known as the Shrieking Shack, were they were always guaranteed privacy because so few people knew how to find it. Al had just finished explaining why certain potion ingredients cancelled each other out and James _still_ didn’t understand it and he was getting angry.  
  
“What do you mean, James?” Al said softly. “I’m only trying to help you, I don’t...”  
  
“You’re always helping me,” James spat. “You’re always helping me and covering for me, and you’re never off having your own life. Don’t you want that, Al?”  
  
“James, please,” Al said, curling in on himself. “Please, I do everything I know how to for you – I can’t ever make up for what you did for me so please –“  
  
“ _Don’t talk about that_!” James screamed. “Don’t do anything because you owe me, I don’t want you to-“  
  
“But I do owe you,” Al whispered. “James, please just tell me what to do. Tell me how to make this better, tell me...”  
  
But James didn’t know what to say. He felt suffocated by Al’s constant love, knowing he didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve that anyone should actually love him and Al was so _good_. James had done nothing to deserve Al’s attention or affection when he’d forced everyone else away from him with his anger and his mood swings.  
  
James just didn’t have anything to give him, any more than he’d already given.  
  
Except the one thing maybe he wanted...  
  
Without thinking, James put his hands on Al’s face and brought their mouths together. His mouth and eyes were open and he bit a kiss onto Al’s upper lip as Al stared into his face wildly.  
  
“James?” Al said and there was a tremble in his voice as well as his body which shook against James’ own.  
  
James closed his eyes and pressed himself more fully against Al, not really thinking about what he was doing as he dragged his teeth lazy across Al’s lip. He backed Al up against the stone wall without even knowing what he intended and flicked his tongue over Al’s lips and chin.  
  
Al seemed frozen at first, his hands clenched into fists by his side. James honestly didn’t know if he wanted Al to stop him, proving that Al was too good for him after all, or if he wanted Al to urge him on, proving that James’ only worth was sex. He didn’t know and didn’t know and so he ground his hips against his brother’s, waiting until Al forced his hands to relax, waiting even as he kissed him to see what he would do.  
  
Al’s hands fluttered butterfly soft into James’ hair. Al pulled back as much as he could, putting barely an inch between their faces, studying James’ eyes before lowering his eyelids in something like submission. James felt something inside him give a savage twist and he might have stopped right there at that expression on Al’s face, but then Al leaned forward and brushed his lips tentatively over James’ own.  
  
Al was tense, still panicked, and James breathed out, shuddering into his face. He’d gone too fast, that was all, but he didn’t really know how else to do this. James backed off a little to let Al lead, and lead he did, kissing James’ face softly, touching his lips to nose, cheeks, jaw, tender and sweet. James was suddenly overwhelmed with the need to give Al everything, and began to kiss back with more intensity, but still holding back from the onslaught he’d begun with.  
  
Al tensed again when James began pulling at his robe, but James whispered, “It’s ok, it’s ok, I want this, I want to do this,” so that Al would know James wasn’t doing it just for him, would know that James would do anything to make Al happy, give him what he deserved. “I love you.”  
  
That, Al understood. “I love you, James,” he whispered. “I love you.” And then he closed his eyes.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
In the corridor outside the interrogation room, Harry was shaking. Kingsley stood solidly beside him, presumably to prevent him from smashing anything vital when he inevitably lost his head again, Harry thought viciously. But then without warning his legs went from under him and he was on the floor with his head in his hands. “It’s not true,” Harry said. “It’s not true,” he said again, unconscious of the pleading tone that crept into his voice.  
  
Kingsley cleared his throat. “There are other possible explanations, Potter, I agree. But the Malfoy boy is telling us the truth as he sees it, so...”  
  
“So what?” said Harry dully. “So my sons were...”  
  
“I am not saying that,” said Kingsley flatly. “I am saying that Scorpius Malfoy didn’t do it. Now, I used to be a passable Auror myself,” he said without a hint of humour, “and so I think I’ll take over from Weasley. Maybe we can coax out something else, something Malfoy doesn’t even realise he saw. Meanwhile...”  
  
“Sir!” said Roberts from down the corridor. “There’s a preliminary report in on the body.”  
  
Harry made a choked screaming sound in the back of his throat. Only the certainty that he wouldn’t be able to hold himself upright for long enough prevented him from taking a swing at the bastard’s head. His beautiful son had become _the body_.  
  
“Give it to me, Roberts,” Kingsley said impatiently.  
  
“Sir?” Roberts looked at him in shock – Shacklebolt hadn’t taken a case in almost three decades.  
  
“Who else?” Kingsley snapped. “It needs a senior Auror and who have we got? Potter and Weasley are out, Dawlish retired last month, Savage and Williamson are undercover, Davies is still incapacitated...”  
  
“Applebee,” Harry said, the strain of forcing out the word making his jaw ache.  
  
Kingsley nodded slowly. “Smart, discreet and just detached enough to handle this. Get her in here,” he barked at Roberts. “But until then _hand me that file_!”  
  
Roberts handed it over immediately, nearly dropping it, before running off down the corridor. Harry couldn’t find it in himself to feel anything much about that at all. There was too much weight on his chest, crushing his heart, preventing him from breathing. Harry didn’t know how much more he could stand.  
  
“Merlin,” Kingsley said from above him.  
  
All Harry wanted to do at that moment was go home, go back to his paperwork and pretend that the last four hours of his life hadn’t happened.  
  
“What is it?” he asked just as the door at the end of the corridor burst open once again.  
  
“Harry!”  
  
At last she was here. Harry felt the world snap into focus and for a moment he didn’t think about what he would have to do now she was here or how worried she must be or anything. He just watched her run towards him, a blaze of bright hair and strength. His _wife_. Harry stood, and barely managed two steps before she’d reached him and then she was in his arms, warm and lovely and smelling of flowers, the one person with whom he always, always felt safe.  
  
Ginny touched his face. “I thought you’d be at St Mungo’s but then they brought me here – Harry, what’s going on? Please, tell me, what’s going on?”  
  
Harry held her tighter. He was afraid now that he wouldn’t be able to tell her, wouldn’t be able to force the words out.  
  
“Harry, you’re scaring me,” Ginny whispered, a note of pleading in her voice.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said into her shoulder, and his voice broke in the middle. “Oh Ginny, I’m so sorry.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Aidan Lynch Junior was, frankly, tired of being “junior”. His whole life, he’d lived in the shadow of his famous Snitch-catching father, who’d been utterly disappointed in his son when it turned out he could barely even stay on a damned broomstick. He had become an Auror largely to escape. At least being a Junior Auror would eventually lead to being a Senior Auror, could even, potentially, lead to being Head Auror and who knew what after that?  
  
In the meantime, however, he was stuck with all the routine, boring-as-watching-paint-dry assignments. And more than his share of night shifts, to boot. Course, Auror Weasley was in charge of the night shifts these days and he was a lot more relaxing to work with than Head Auror Potter.  
  
Didn’t stop Lynch from feeling aggrieved when Auror Weasley sent him out to check out someone’s Trace being set off.  
  
“But sir,” Aidan protested, “it’s not even a cautionable offence – can’t we inform the school if it’s right next to Hogwarts? I mean, what do you want me to do out there?”  
  
Auror Weasley raised an eyebrow. “I want you to act as part of the community, Lynch, which in case you’ve forgotten is half our mandate. Besides,” and here the git actually smiled, “you’ve finished all your paperwork – you must be eager for something to do.”  
  
Aidan could _feel_ that bint Jenny Flint sniggering at him. Couldn’t stand that girl, even if she did have nice tits.  
  
So off Aidan went, out into the darkness for a nice, tiring long-distance Apparition at two in the morning.  
  
Aidan wouldn’t forget that. He wouldn’t forget that he’d been annoyed at having to go out on the call or that he’d resented night shift, or that he’d actually felt like telling his boss to stuff it for a moment, because after what he found he felt so ashamed of himself that he never let himself react like that again.  
  
He reached the rotting building on the edge of the Hogwarts grounds and followed the stairs to the upper floor, then followed the keening sound into the room. He’d ruled out kids having a laugh, but he still didn’t think it was going to be all that serious, not yet.  
  
He slid open the door, gently. “Hello? Department of Magical Law Enforcement – who’s there?”  
  
The sound stopped.  
  
“ _Lumos_ ,” said Aidan. He kept the light gentle, not wanting to spook whoever had been crying. A girl? Had someone hurt her?  
  
A body folded up in on itself was leaning against the wall. Black school robes, dark hair from what Aidan could see, frame looked more like a boy’s now he could make it out. But what threw him was the way the wizard’s wand was there, just lying on the floor beside him the way you’d discard a pen or a used piece of parchment. Aidan could hear Trainer Proudfoot now – “CONSTANT VIGILANCE!”  
  
But what kind of wizard, no matter how disturbed, didn’t care about his wand?  
  
“Hey,” Aidan said, leaving a ball of light floating mid-air but tucking his own wand away. Slowly he knelt down by the boy. “Are you hurt?”  
  
Slowly the boy raised his head – and Aidan felt shock ripple through him. Before he came here he’d thought he’d be breaking up a hormone-crazed teen clinch. Once he’d heard the sobbing, he’d assumed the student would be younger, maybe Muggle-born and lonely. He hadn’t expected Harry Potter’s son.  
  
“Hello,” the boy said. His voice sounded so strange.  
  
“Hello,” Aidan echoed idiotically. “What’s going on?”  
  
The boy blinked slowly as though he didn’t understand the question. “I don’t-”  
  
Aidan swallowed. “Ok. Never mind. We’ll talk later. Let’s just concentrate on getting you out of here.”  
  
At that the boy started to tremble violently. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t...”  
  
“Ok,” Aidan said again, reaching gently towards the boy’s shoulders. “Look, I work for your Dad, right?”  
  
That seemed to spark something. “Dad,” the boy moaned, dread permeating the sound. “Oh, Dad.”  
  
“It’s Ok, James,” Aidan said, still trying to soothe. “Your Dad will be fine so long as you’re Ok. Why don’t you just...”  
  
But wild and torn, some strange sound was coming out of the boy’s throat. Aidan had never heard anything like it; afterwards he’d always say it was the sound of your heart being torn from your body – you could hear the anguish and the hopelessness and it tore at your soul.  
  
“James,” Aidan said urgently, trying to encourage the boy to regain control. “James.”  
  
“I’m not James!” the boy screamed suddenly. “I’m Al!”  
  
Aidan cursed himself for his mistake. “Al, then. Listen...”  
  
But Al had something else on his mind. “James is over there.”  
  
Somehow Aidan knew even before he turned what he was going to see.  
  
James was lying on the floor, his body slightly twisted, his wand in his hand, his eyes open and staring at nothing. Aidan had seen death too often to mistake it.  
  
“He won’t wake,” Al whispered. “I’ve said _Rennervate_ a hundred times. Why won’t he wake?”  
  
  
**Now**  
  
Harry went with Ginny to see James’ body, and then he took her to Al’s room, to watch him writhe in his sleep despite the heavy sedation.  
  
“Can’t they give him anything else?” Ginny asked with tears in her voice.  
  
“They said not,” Harry said. “I did ask.”  
  
“And you think he saw Jamie...” Ginny couldn’t even get the words out.  
  
Harry nodded. Ginny had been asking the standard family-of-victim questions for what felt like hours. He wasn’t sure how long it had actually been, though by now he was sure the Hogwarts students would be waking.  
  
“Ginny,” he said suddenly, “one of us has to go get Lily.”  
  
Ginny flinched. “Can’t you...”  
  
“Ginny,” Harry said again, “If you can’t do it, I will. But if you can, I’m going to see what else they’ve found out. All right?”  
  
Ginny nodded slowly. For answers she could do this. For James, for Lily, she could do this.  
  
Harry kissed her softly. They parted ways outside the hospital.  
  
When Harry got back to the Auror office, Tamsin Applebee had taken over just as Harry had suggested. Good Auror, Applebee. Gentle with the victims, tough on the suspects just the way Harry wanted it, especially today.  
  
Ron was still there, too, looking much the way Harry felt – as though he’d aged a decade in the last few hours. Applebee had clearly slept, had her morning tea and breakfast, and was ready to face the day. Harry half resented it even though he knew it was what the case needed.  
  
“Sir,” she said, facing him. “I’m so sorry, sir.”  
  
Harry nodded an acknowledgement. “What have you got?”  
  
Applebee sighed. “Shacklebolt finished the interrogation on the Malfoy boy, didn’t get anything else. He saw no one at the scene except your sons. Lynch and Flint bagged and tagged everything at the scene they could – photographs are there,” she nodded her head. “You didn’t go down there at all, sir, did you?”  
  
“Haven’t had time,” Harry shook his head.  
  
“Good,” Tamsin said. “Don’t.”  
  
Harry felt his mouth slide open a little. Tamsin’s hand was on his arm before he could get out so much as a squeak. “Harry,” she said, “all due respect, but I had to spend an hour soothing Malfoy senior after whatever happened with his son.” There was absolutely no condemnation in her tone, but Harry still felt the lurch of shame inside. Eyeing him carefully, she went on, “We want a nice clean case when we find whoever did this. You want to be kept in the loop, I absolutely respect that, but Shacklebolt said you chose me for the case so that means,” her tone changed, “it’s my case.”  
  
Harry let the corner of his mouth curl up. “Why I chose you, Applebee. Now, before I left, Shacklebolt was looking at the autopsy report. Anything we didn’t know in there?”  
  
Applebee bit her lip. “Nothing that tells us more about what happened. He’s got marks on his neck and a few scratches, but they could be...” Her gaze flickered away from him.  
  
Harry had been so busy pretending for Ginny’s sake that there was nothing worse than James’ body on the slab in front of them, so busy not mentioning anything Scorpius Malfoy had said that somehow he’d almost made _himself_ forget. But now it all rushed back in. James had marks on his body that Al might have put there when they... when they...  
  
“Amorous,” he said, not looking at her.  
  
Harry would never believe it. He would have to see Al or James’ memories for himself – he would believe nothing less.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Al had taken to staring at himself in the mirror a lot recently. He kept trying to make sure it couldn’t really be seen, was all in his head. Every time he looked at James he saw him at his every age from when Al was barely old enough to remember anything at all. Every time Al looked at his own body, he saw the things he’d done with it.  
  
So he’d see James eating dinner and remember his pudgy hand stealing freshly baked fairy cakes, snatching them out of the air as they tried to fly away.  
  
That hand had since been on Al’s cock.  
  
He saw James chewing the end of a quill and remembered him at eight with huge gaps where his teeth had fallen out and new ones not yet replaced them, sliding a liquorice wand through the gap.  
  
That mouth had sucked on Al’s balls. That tongue had licked a path down Al’s spine until James had shoved it inside Al’s arse. James had stuck his tongue and then his fingers and then his cock up Al’s arse, and Al had made a series of shocked, helpless sounds until he came, bucking into his brother’s hand, screaming against his own knuckles.  
  
Al kept trying to see it in his face, the knowledge of his brother’s skin against his, the weight of his brother’s cock in his hand, the scent of his brother’s sweat dripping down on him, his brother’s cum in his throat, his brother, his brother, his brother, oh _God_.  
  
_Stop that,_ he told himself sternly. _Just stop thinking about it. Maybe it won’t happen again._  
  
He knew it would.  
  
Al couldn’t see it in himself, anyway. He could see that he’d lost weight, that his shoulders slumped a little more than they should. But he was fine. He didn’t know why he’d said that thing to Malfoy - _No one can help me_. Al would do anything for James, no question. No problem. Al was absolutely fine.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
“What aren’t you telling me?” Harry asked.  
  
Applebee sighed. “Look, Harry – there are things you might not want to know.”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Are you about to tell me you found evidence that Al and James _were_...”  
  
Applebee didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “Not that.”  
  
“Then what?”  
  
Applebee looked at Harry long and hard, then jerked her head to indicate that he should follow her. She led him to her office and closed the door behind them.  
  
“Harry,” she said seriously. “This is not as far as we know pertinent to the murder.”  
  
Harry hadn’t let himself think that word. It clanged heavy into the air and hung there between them. _Murder. Your son was murdered._  
  
“Tell me,” he said. Remaining ignorant wasn’t even a possibility.  
  
Applebee nodded. “They found scarring in James’ rectum.”  
  
Harry didn’t know how to react.  
  
“Not recently,” she went on, watching his face carefully. “Definitely at least four years ago was the Mediwizard’s estimate. It would have healed perfectly, but someone tried to heal it and didn’t quite do it perfectly. That’s the only reason we can tell.”  
  
“You’re telling me,” Harry said slowly, testing reality with every breath, “that my son was having anal sex at the age of fourteen.”  
  
“We don’t know that, Harry,” Applebee said firmly. “He could have been hurt by a spell gone wrong, he could have, I don’t know, he could just have been experimenting and done it to himself.”  
  
Harry covered his mouth with his hand, pressing his knuckle into his lip until he nearly cut himself open with his teeth.  
  
“This does not prove anything, Harry,” Applebee told him. He could feel her willing him to believe her.  
  
“And Al?” Harry said, afraid to ask. “Can you tell about Al?”  
  
Applebee’s gaze never wavered. “As he is of age, we need his permission to examine him and perform any tests. Should his Healer consider him to be incapacitated, a family member would make those decisions on his behalf.”  
  
Harry received the message loud and clear.  
  
“I’m going back there now,” he said. Applebee indicated the fireplace and in moments Harry was back at St Mungo’s.  
  
The Healer in charge of Al’s ward was standing outside the door with Flint – apparently Applebee had put security on Al, too. When they saw Harry, the Healer immediately headed straight for him.  
  
“Mr Potter!” he said, a little flustered. “I was just asking your colleague to send for you!”  
  
Harry’s heart stopped beating. “Is something wrong? Is Al-?”  
  
“He’s awake, Mr Potter,” the Healer said gently.

  
**Then**  
  
It was Al’s fault. Al had been the one out in the Forbidden Forest on a dare, Al was the one who had gotten himself lost, Al was the one James had been trying to keep out of trouble by coming to fetch him. It was Al’s fault.  
  
The strange man with the hot breath had come out of nowhere. Al hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard him. One moment he was all alone, knowing he’d been stupid, he was lost, what would Mum say? The next this half-feral man was pinning him to the ground. Al was too scared even to call out; the man was smelling him the way Uncle Dudley’s dogs did, but instead of the joy of a puppy there was the menace of a predator.  
  
“Potter,” said the man, giving a howl of triumph. “Potter, Potter, you even look like him. Look at you,” he said, stroking a finger down Al’s face in a way that made him shudder. Al had never really understood being afraid before – it had always seemed silly, something that would go away as soon as the insect was dead or the Boggart banished. But this man petrified him – he couldn’t move, could barely shake. All he could do was look into the man’s eyes and feel the violence itching to burst out from behind his eyes.  
  
“Delicious,” it said. Not a man, an it. It was smelling him again, smelling him and grinding down against his body. “So young, so fresh.” Its teeth were huge and pointed, its breath foul. Al closed his eyes to block out the sight, but that just made the thing’s growl more immediate and Al couldn’t bear that.  
  
Then the thing clambered to its feet and grabbed him. It was strong – it pulled him off the ground with one arm and dragged him after it, taking a few bouncing steps before hurling Al against a tree. Al lay there, face down, holding onto the tree with one arm while he shook. The thing had its hands on him everywhere – stroking his back, his thighs, his bottom, making satisfied little grunts as it went. Al didn’t know exactly what it wanted – except, somehow he _did_ and the thought of it brought bile to his throat and tears to his eyes.  
  
“Please don’t hurt me,” Al begged and the thing chuckled in response.  
  
“Yes,” it said, sliding a hand round to cup Al. “Oh, yes, beg.”  
  
“ _Petrificus Totalis_ ,” suddenly came from behind him, and the thing slumped down on him.  
  
Al scrambled up as quickly as he could, rolling the heavy thing off his back.  
  
“James!” Al was so relieved he could have wept. “James, thank God...”  
  
James grabbed his hand. “Shut up and run!”  
  
They ran through the Forbidden Forest in the dark, plants reaching out at them, animals running either to them or from them. They ran through the darkness fuelled by sheer fear until Al suddenly realised – “James, I’ve lost my wand!”  
  
James slowed. “You can’t be serious.”  
  
But Al was afraid. “James-“  
  
“Leave your sodding wand,” James ordered him, more afraid than imperious. “Come _on_.”  
  
But that moment when Al had slowed them had been enough. “ _Petrificus Totalis_ ,” suddenly shot out of the woods at them and they both froze.  
  
_It_ was there again. And now it was angry.  
  
“Potters,” it sneered. “Potty Potters always _meddling_ , always in the _fucking_ way.”  
  
Al whimpered deep in his throat – and found himself surprised he’d been able to make the sound. It obviously wasn’t a trained wizard, though it had a wand. _His_ wand, Al realised as his stomach dropped into his shoes. He could feel tears building up behind his eyes. _It_ was going to hurt James now, too.  
  
That was when James spoke to it. “What do you want?” The words didn’t sound anything like James’ usual joking bravado; they sounded like the plea of a terrified little boy.  
  
It smirked. “Just a bit of fun. Potters aren’t any fun.”  
  
And that was when James said it. “I could be fun. Me, not him.”

Al wanted to scream, _James, what are you doing?_ but the spell had worked too well on him for that.  
  
Or that’s what he told himself. He’s never been sure – could he have fought harder? Could he have stopped it?  
  
_It_ stared at James for a moment, then it laughed. Al saw it walk over to James and drag a claw-like finger down his cheek, drawing just a tiny drop of blood. “Do you know what you’re signing up for, boy?”  
  
James’ brief moment of defiance crumpled, but he stayed firm. “Just don’t hurt my baby brother,” he said.  
  
It smirked. “Gryffindors.” It sized James up for a moment. “Can you make it good for me?”  
  
James shook. “How?”  
  
It smiled. “I want to hear you.”  
  
James shook even more. But he didn’t say no.  
  
It ended the spell, and dropped Al’s wand into the dirt where it stood. In a flash it was holding James in one hand the way it had done to him earlier. “Well, baby brother Potter,” it said, “you try to attack me, or run away or _move_ , and I’ll kill you and your brave big brother here. Clear?”  
  
“Please don’t do this,” Al whimpered, curling into a ball.  
  
It smirked. “You want to trade yourself? I’ll probably be rougher with you, you know,” it reached out a finger towards him at this, “you look that bit much more like him.”  
  
Al couldn’t help it – he flinched away.  
  
“Don’t,” James said, and Al didn’t know which of them it was meant for.  
  
The thing Al remembers most is the way it laughed as it dragged James away. That, and the way it grunted when it was making James scream. The sound of flesh slapping on flesh, the feral bark it gave when it was coming, the way James’ screaming went on and on, eventually leaving no emotion in the sound until something in it cracked and James was sobbing. And _it_ liked the sobbing, and it started again.  
  
Al remembers all of that. But actually what he remembers most is the way he just sat there, terrified, unmoving, not even trying for his wand, not even trying to save James the way James saved him.  
  
When _it_ eventually let James go, it kept its word. It didn’t try to take Al, too – it just dropped James, said to Al, “Bye baby Potter!” and ran off into the night.  
  
So when James looked at him from his tear-streaked face and ordered him not to tell anyone, ever, Al had tried to argue. His guilt crushing him, he begged James to let someone help him until James, weak from blood loss and exertion, collapsed before they reached Hogwarts. Al watched his eyes roll up in his head, watched him fold in on himself and collapse.  
  
“No!” he called out as he lunged for his brother, catching him. “No, James, please, I’ll do it, anything you want, I’ll never tell, I never will, but don’t die, please don’t.” Al bit his knuckles, laid James down as tenderly as he could and started firing all the healing spells he knew at his brother. They weren’t the strongest, but they were what he knew. He concentrated on hiding what James didn’t want anyone to know, firing lights into the sky once for every four healing spells until finally someone found them.  
  
“You make sure he doesn’t die!” was what Al said, and he had no idea how formidable he’d looked, streaked with dirt, wand in hand, body trembling, face set. He looked like his father ready to take on Voldemort.  
  
If James died, nothing much would matter any more.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
Harry crept into the room to find Al staring at the wall. His head was turned away from the door and he didn’t make a sound or a flicker of movement to indicate that he’d heard Harry enter.  
  
“Al,” Harry begged. He’d only meant to let Al know who it was, but somehow the words had come out full of longing and desperation. Harry swallowed hard – it wasn’t Al’s job to reassure _him_ for Merlin’s sake.  
  
“Al,” he said again. “Al, are you all right?”  
  
“It wasn’t a dream,” Al said quietly, not turning. “Was it.”  
  
“No,” Harry said. “No, James is... gone. Al, I’m sorry.”  
  
“You’re sorry,” Al repeated mechanically.  
  
“Al––” Harry reached out to touch him.  
  
“Don’t,” Al screamed, flinching away from Harry’s touch, whatever had been holding him together disintegrating in front of Harry’s eyes. “Don’t touch me, don’t, James is dead, oh God, James is dead, James is dead.” Al dropped his face into his shaking hands, tracing the lines of his face to find out who he was in this new world in which he had no brother.  
  
“James is dead,” he said again and Harry watched helplessly as his younger son tore himself apart.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
James slammed the door; Al’s head jerked up immediately.  
  
“James?” Al said uncertainly.  
  
James swallowed hard. The itch under his skin started early this morning, might even have been what woke him – the desperate need to touch Al and know Al was his, wasn’t going anywhere.  
  
Sometimes James wondered just why Al was doing this. He knew Al felt beholden to him, knew Al was desperate to please him, but he wasn’t always sure that Al _wanted_ him.  
  
And then, today...  
  
“Why is Scorpius Malfoy always bloody following you around?” James snapped, hating the way Al recoiled.  
  
“I don’t-“ Al began.  
  
James shook his head furiously. “Don’t say you don’t know. It’s obvious. So say it.”  
  
“James,” said Al, trying to calm him, “James, he’s got it into his head that we’re friends or something, that’s all...”  
  
Merlin’s beard, was Al really that naive? “He wants to fuck you.”  
  
Al stopped dead.  
  
“It’s true, isn’t it?” James could feel his eyes burning as he stared at Al, willing him to say something.  
  
Al's face was so pale. “He has a crush or something, he’ll get over it.”  
  
James could feel his own colour rising even as Al's drained. “So until then you’re, what, going to put up with him following you around?”  
  
“Fuck, James,” Al blurted out, “I don’t even think about him, all right? There’s too much damn else on my mind, and I...”  
  
“You can’t leave me,” James blurted out suddenly, shocking them both into silence.  
  
Al crossed his arms over his chest, hugging himself tightly. “James, you’re my brother, I...”  
  
James didn’t want to hear that, didn’t want to hear again about how Al only stayed around because they were stuck with each other.  
  
“You’re mine,” James snarled instead, and lunged.  
  
He didn’t go for Al’s mouth, not right away, instead biting down hard on his earlobe as he backed Al up against the wall. Al made a noise in his throat James couldn’t identify when James reached into his school robes, into his underwear and grabbed his cock. It was soft; that made James angry and he bit down again, sliding his tongue down Al’s throat and back up to suck his earlobe as James’ hand worked him to hardness.  
  
“James, too rough,” Al said, pushing at his shoulders.  
  
“Would Scorpius be gentler?” James snapped, teeth at Al’s jaw.  
  
“James,” there were tears in the voice, “James, I haven’t done anything, _please_.”  
  
It was the _please_ that made James look up, meet Al’s eyes. He’d closed them but they fluttered open now, and James once again marvelled at their colour.  
  
James extracted his hand from around Al’s cock, which was still barely even half-hard, licked his palm twice and wrapped it around Al again, tugging more slowly this time, more insistently. He lost himself in Al’s eyes and the feeling of his fingers tightening on James’ shoulders as James stroked him relentlessly.

  
When he was finally hard, James kissed him, keeping his eyes open to watch the brilliant green blur and darken into the colour he always thought of as desire. He loved Al’s eyes but couldn’t tell him right at that moment, needed too badly to feel Al around him. With a tug, Al’s lower body was freed. James soothed him with a kiss as he turned him around, and when Al braced himself against the concrete James whispered nonsense against him, nonsense and a lubrication spell, sliding his fingers inside and scissoring them a little too quickly. James knew he was rushing, knew it and couldn’t hold back; Al gave a small sob as James slid inside him but then James felt a little like sobbing himself.  
  
“You can’t leave me,” James whispered into the curve of Al’s neck as his hips found their rhythm. “You can’t ever leave me. You’re mine.”  
  
“I’m yours,” Al replied, a broken sound amidst the panting, and James felt his tears drip onto Al’s neck even as he came hot and fierce inside his brother’s body.  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
In the end the Healer had to sedate Al again. Harry sent word to Applebee that Al had woken up but was still too traumatised by the loss of his brother to make much sense. Harry could sense her frustration at his inability to get anything out of Al, combined with his decision to have Al sedated again. But Harry didn’t much care at that moment. He didn’t care what Al and James had done, ever. He just cared that Al should come out of this, that this wouldn’t destroy both of them.  
  
“He has to make it,” Harry said, not realising he’d said it aloud until Flint said, “Sir?” Harry shook his head at her. As his head swam with everything he’d found out, Harry held on to that one piece of certainty; Al was going to be all right. He _was_.  
  
Flint cleared her throat. “Ah, sir, you have visitors.”  
  
Harry was convinced it was going to be Applebee, demanding that he wake Al, but instead it was Ginny, with Lynch behind her – the first Auror on the scene, Harry remembered. He wondered why he hadn’t managed to talk to him yet, then sighed. Too damn much else on his mind. He already knew that Lynch hadn’t seen anyone but James and Al, had called for backup immediately and secured the scene – Ron had told him all of that. Lynch could be a bit lazy sometimes but he was damned effective.  
  
“Sir,” Lynch said. “Applebee asked me to stay with your wife until we rule out that someone intends harm to your whole family.” _I hadn’t even thought..._ Harry realised, stricken. Lynch went on, “I took her to Hogwarts to pick up your daughter – she’s at the Burrow now. No one had been near your son’s bed since Professor Longbottom warded it, we’re sure of that.”  
  
Harry nodded acknowledgement and looked back at Ginny; they’d known each other thirty years, been married most of that time, but right now there was something in her face Harry had never seen before, something that shifted him out of his guilt and right into focusing on her fully. “Oh, Harry, God, I went to Hogwarts you know, to see Jamie’s bed and just... I don’t know, feel him or something. But I found something – should I give it to you, or...?”  
  
“To me, yes,” Harry said, desperate for a distraction. “What is it?”  
  
Ginny didn’t seem to know quite what to say. “It seems to be spelled so that only family can read it – Lynch said it just looked like a _Quibbler_ to him – so they didn’t find it before, weren’t looking for hidden messages so... Harry, read it.”  
  
She handed Harry a piece of parchment. Harry frowned and opened it.  
  
_I’m so sorry, but I can’t do this any more. Everything is so fucked up and I know you need me but I’m just not strong enough. I know I’m a coward for doing this but I couldn’t tell you face to face because I love you. I do love you. Don’t hate me for leaving you, please._  
  
“It’s a...” _Suicide note_ , his Auror experience screamed at him. But that didn’t make any sense at all. “You found this in Jamie’s bed?”  
  
Ginny nodded, eyes glinting with tears. “But it doesn’t make sense-“  
  
“Because it’s Al’s writing,” Harry finished for her.  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Al couldn’t tell himself that he was fine any more. Not after James had sobbed into his back, said things he’d never imagined hearing.  
  
Because Al was starting to think about the future. A future in which James was always there, always needing him. A future in which sex would always be bound up in guilt and confusion and horror. Even if, _even if_ James one day let him go, what was he going to do? He thought he might like boys, sure, but how could he ever let a lover really know him when this was part of what he’d have a right to know? How could he ever be far enough removed from James to make a life for himself?  
  
And what would happen to him if one day he and James only saw each other at the family Christmas, brothers who’d been lovers turned to strangers, looking at each other and remembering the someone that they’d used to know? The thought was so alien that Al shuddered.  
  
James had always been there. Since Al had been born they’d been “the Potter boys” – Al didn’t even know who he was without James. But James now...  
  
The shame, the sickening shame of it all rushed back in and Al had to fight with himself not to cry. James had hurt him this time, hurt him and cried about it and Al wanted it to stop, just wanted it to _stop_.  
  
He’d thought of it before, once. More than once. He’d looked up that spell Dad had used on Scorpius’ father and wondered if you could do that to yourself, how long it would take him to bleed out. He’d thought about taking poison and making it look like he’d just botched a potion. He’d thought about it so much sometimes he felt like tearing at his own skin because he didn’t belong in it any more.  
  
There was just no way out, nothing he could do that wouldn’t be a betrayal of James. He couldn’t tell anyone, he couldn’t leave his brother, it would destroy him. But he couldn’t do this, couldn’t possibly do this for the rest of his life. It was bad enough now – how were they going to hide it as they got older? What was going to happen?  
  
Maybe if James didn’t feel like he had to protect Al any more he’d finally get some help. Maybe he could rebuild his life so that it would be what it should always have been, what it would have been except for Al.  
  
Maybe James would die inside the way Al already had.  
  
Al told himself the latter was the most likely. That thought had always stopped him before.  
  
But after today, all Al could think was, _I can’t bear this for one more day._  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  
The one question they’d never come close to answering, Harry realised suddenly, was who else had been out there. The Aurors hadn’t found any evidence of anyone else and Harry had been sure they just hadn’t found it _yet_ , but what if there really was nothing to find?  
  
What if his sons really had been lovers?  
  
Harry was too horrified to feel the full emotional weight of this possibility; he was numb, his brain running overtime while his emotions froze over.  
  
If James and Al really had become... involved, then perhaps they’d made a suicide pact. It was so common in the Muggle literature Al loved that it was practically cliché. What if they had decided that being separated when James left school was too much for them and decided to end it all?  
  
_How could it have happened? Why would they turn to each other like_ that? Harry’s heart screamed. He ignored it.  
  
The parchment Ginny had given him was still in his hand. There was one way to be sure.  
  
“Ginny,” he said, mind racing, “did you find anything like this in Al’s dorm?”  
  
Ginny shook her head. “I didn’t look there, I...”  
  
“Ginny, please,” he said urgently. “Go back to Hogwarts now and see what you can find.”  
  
Ginny’s mouth flapped helplessly. “I think I should be here when he...”  
  
“He’s out again,” Harry told her firmly. “Ginny, you know what this looks like.”  
  
Ginny was shaking her head. “James would _never_...”  
  
“Ginny!” Harry called again. “Ginny, please, I’m begging you, I can hold off the Aurors but only for so long. Lynch probably already went to report to Applebee. I need you to go back and figure out if it is what I think, and then we need to figure out what to do. I need you to be strong just this little bit longer, sweetheart, please.”  
  
He was holding her shoulders in his hands by the time he finished, imparting as much urgency as he could. He watched her pull herself together and brought her closer to him for just a moment, loving her for being willing to do this, anything, for her family.  
  
“I love you,” he whispered. Turning, he called out, “Flint?”  
  
“Yes sir?”  
  
“Stay here with Al, I’m going back to the office.”  
  
Harry didn’t wait for an answer, he simply spun around and Apparated on the spot. When he entered the Auror office he found total chaos.  
  
Five Aurors were struggling to subdue a figure that snarled and snapped viciously. Red jets of light bounced off the thing whatever it was as the Aurors wrestled with it, trying to hold it in one place long enough for someone, anyone to put it down.  
  
Harry reacted immediately. “ _Petrificus Totalis_!”  
  
The thing jerked once then stilled.  
  
Slowly the Aurors picked themselves up; Ron, Harry noticed now, was one of them.  
  
“Cheers, mate,” he gasped. “You’ll never believe...”  
  
But Harry had had time to look. “Fenrir Greyback?” he said incredulous.  
  
“Yeah,” Ron said, rubbing a swelling on the side of his face. “Packs quite a wallop for his age – and seems like he’s even resistant to magic. I didn’t know werewolves got stronger as they got older.”  
  
Harry shook his head in disbelief. “We’ve had a warrant out on him for twenty-five years, how...?”  
  
Ron shrugged. “Anonymous tip. He’s been hanging around the Forbidden Forest if you can believe that.”  
  
Greyback’s voice startled them. “I always did like children,” he said, and the sound of his voice made Harry’s skin crawl.  
  
Greyback could move his eyes and his jaw already – and Harry knew how strong his spell had been. “You’d better get him somewhere secure right now.”  
  
“Put me back in a cage? I don’t think so,” Greyback snarled – and suddenly from nowhere his arm was moving, claws fully extended, and as the Aurors shouted and rallied no one was close enough to prevent him burying his claws in his own chest. Blood gushed everywhere, obscene.  
  
Harry met Greyback’s eyes, watching the triumph blazing there as Greyback licked his lips, everyone around him frozen in shock. “I liked your son, Potter,” he smirked, then gave the claws one final twist and collapsed to the floor, dead.  
  
No one moved for a moment – and then Harry was on top of him, shaking him, the fury back, clawing at his throat. “It was you! You! You killed my James, you killed him, you _killed_ him you fucking bastard, you...”  
  
“Harry.” It was Ron, but Harry was too far gone to care. Greyback’s blood was all over him, coating Harry’s clothes but all he could do was clutch at the corpse and scream and rage uselessly.  
  
Now he would never know why.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  


James had first put a name to the face that had haunted his dreams at fourteen, when the _Daily Prophet_ had run an article blasting the Aurors for being unable to catch Fenrir Greyback, well over sixty but still somehow evading capture. James had taken one look at the picture of Greyback and dropped his fork back onto his breakfast plate. Al, sitting a little down the table, had been at his side immediately, asking, “What?”  
  
James couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, just pointed at the paper. Al’s face turned ashen and for a moment they were both back there, helpless in the dark, stupid children who’d walked into danger. James had stayed stock still for a long moment, unable even to care if he was drawing attention to himself. And then without warning he had bolted from the Great Hall, out into the castle grounds with no thought other than to run as far as he could from all the reminders of what had happened.  
  
“James!” Al was following him. “James, please, we’re safe here, he can’t...”  
  
“ _Safe_!” James spat, rounding on his brother. “He’s still out there, we’re never going to be safe.” James ran a shaking hand over his face, finding it wet and not understanding. “We’re never going to be...”  
  
“James,” said Al, green eyes pleading, “James, it’s ok.” He reached out and James wanted to pull away, wanted to run away as far as he could and never have to look at Al again. Never have to remember what he had done for his brother, never have to admit what had happened to him. But Al wrapped his arms around James tight, and only then did James realise that he was crying, loud anguished sobs coming out of him that he couldn’t even be ashamed of because all he could do was hold on to Al and wait for the pulsing adrenaline to fade.  
  
“I’ve got you,” Al whispered, holding on tightly. “I’ll keep you safe, I will, I promise.”  
  
  
  
**Now**  
  


Applebee handed Harry a glass of water. He needed a bath and some fresh clothes; he was sitting here covered in werewolf blood for God’s sake. But he took the water and sipped at it.  
  
“We can’t place him at the scene,” Applebee said. “We can’t find a wand, either. But from what he said...”  
  
“He did it,” Harry forced out. “I know he did.”  
  
Applebee nodded. “It’s not his usual M.O., but maybe Al was able to fend him off and so he decided to act quickly. When Al wakes up, maybe he can confirm that.”  
  
Harry nodded slowly. “I want to go home,” he said, exhausted beyond all endurance.  
  
Applebee nodded, and gently touched his arm. It was so at odds with her usual cool demeanour that Harry looked up, startled.  
  
“Get some rest,” she said gently. “We know the who at least, and he can’t hurt anyone else. Go home.”  
  
Harry couldn’t go to sleep right away, of course. He had to wash off the blood, tell Ginny and Lily what they’d found out and hold them both while they cried. Lily demanded to see Al at once, and Ginny took her to St Mungo’s while Harry finally had a chance to lie down. By then he’d been awake for twenty-seven hours, but it felt like a year.  
  
Still, sleep didn’t come easily. Harry’s mind was trying to piece together the _why_ of all of this and he found himself unable to relax. His mind whirled with everything he’d learned that day. Scorpius saying James wouldn’t let him near Al. Al’s interest in Dennis Creevey’s death. The scars inside of James. Neville saying that James was emerging from his shell while Al was disappearing. Al writing, _I’m just not strong enough_. Al’s hysteria on learning James was dead.

  
No matter how he tried, he couldn’t understand why James and Al would have been out at the Shrieking Shack, how Scorpius could have misunderstood so badly, what explanation there was except that it was true, that they _had_ been lovers. He just couldn’t deny it to himself any longer.  
  
And the rest of it - if Fenrir Greyback had come out of the Forbidden Forest and stumbled across two boys trying to kill themselves, why hadn’t it ended in bloody violence? He tore people apart, he didn’t shoot killing curses at them. Had it just been a taunt? Just a coincidence?  
  
All Harry knew was that he absolutely needed to talk to his son before anyone else could get to him. He needed to understand.  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  
Al had brought the potion with him to the shack. He pulled his knees tightly under him and wondered if there was anything else he felt like doing before he drank it. He felt like he should have made more of his last meal, but food hadn’t tasted good for a long time. Alcohol sharpened his torment, didn’t blunt it. His friends were strangers, his studies useless.  
  
It wasn’t how he’d planned to die, in this dirty shack where James had fucked him. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it in the castle and this seemed oddly fitting.  
  
“Time to drink up, Potter,” he said to himself.  
  
He barely had the stopper out of the phial when James erupted into the room.  
  
They stared at each other for a long moment.  
  
“No,” Al said suddenly. “Oh, no, James, no, please, you can’t be here.”  
  
James was looking at him as though he’d never seen him before. “You promised,” he said.  
  
Al felt the impotent fury bring tears to his eyes. “I know. James, how...”  
  
“I got your Owl,” James said. “Earlier than you intended I suppose. Assumed you’d be here.” His eyes were wild. “Please, Al, just come back to the castle with me.”  
  
“No,” Al whispered. “I can’t. I can’t do this any more, James.” Al was crying in earnest now. “I can’t take all your emotions along with my own, I can’t be the only person you know how to talk to, I can’t keep feeling like there’s no me without you, I can’t...”  
  
James’ chest was still heaving, presumably from his run down the corridor. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Al shook his head. “It doesn’t...”  
  
“Look, I know,” James said. “That I’m not quite...” he licked his lips. “Rational. And maybe all that stuff... Maybe I should talk about that stuff. With a proper Healer.”  
  
Al barely allowed himself to hope. “You mean talk about...”  
  
“Yeah,” James said. “I’ll do that. I’ll do it, but don’t leave me. Please.”  
  
Stripped to his core, James was, there in front of him, _present_ as he hadn’t been in years.  
  
“I love you, James,” Al sobbed, not knowing what else to say now that hope was sparking in him for the first time he could ever remember.  
  
  
  
  
**Now**

  
Harry had been lying sleepless for two hours when Ginny and Lily came home. Lily had cried herself out, and neither objected when she curled into bed with them. Ginny wrapped her arms around their daughter, Harry wrapped his around them both. When their breathing evened, Harry eased himself out of bed slowly, leaving a brief note in the kitchen.  
  
When he arrived at Al’s hospital room, Flint was still standing there. She straightened to attention when she saw him, but her voice was soft when she asked, “How are you doing, sir?”  
  
Harry tried to smile. “Getting there. I’m going to go in and see Al. Why don’t you take a break or something?”  
  
Flint frowned. “Sir, I’m supposed to––”  
  
Harry interrupted, “Al’s not going to wake up for a long while yet. I’ll watch him.”  
  
“But Applebee...”  
  
Harry smiled sadly. “Let me look after my son.”  
  
There was a long pause. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Flint, but when her voice came, saying simply, “Sir,” he knew she understood. “I’ll be at the office.”  
  
“Thank you,” he said as she walked away.  
  
Harry waited until she was gone until he entered Al’s room. He looked at his son, lying quiet now under the hospital blanket, and took his hand. He cast the charm to rouse Al and another to calm him a little as he woke.  
  
He almost wished that he could let it all go, accept Greyback as the killer and encourage everyone to forget. But how could he live with himself if he didn’t get to the truth behind James’ death?  
  
Al was stirring. He looked over at Harry, blinking slowly, coming around.  
  
“I think I know what happened,” Harry said. “But I need for you to tell me so we can figure out what to do.”  
  
Al met his eyes.  
  
Harry swallowed. “You were having sex with James.”  
  
Al’s face crumpled. That was a yes.  
  
“You knew it was wrong, and you didn’t know how to tell us.”  
  
Al sobbed. Another yes.  
  
“And you went out to the Shack that night to kill yourselves.”  
  
“Don’t,” Al begged, closing his eyes as tight as he could, as though he could prevent his father from saying the next part.  
  
“Then what happened?” Harry said.  
  
Al wouldn’t look at him at all.  
  
Harry could barely force the words out. This was going to make it real. “Was it Greyback?”  
  
Al’s eyes flew open again and he turned to his father urgently. “What?”  
  
Harry swallowed. “Fenrir Greyback.”  
  
Al was shaking now. “How do you know about that?”  
  
“We caught him in the Forbidden Forest.”  
  
Al’s eyes widened; he looked terrified. “James was right,” he breathed.  
  
“Is that it?” Harry persisted. “Greyback attacked you and managed to kill James, but you fended him off. Is that what happened?”  
  
Al was struggling to make sense of his father’s words. “Greyback was in the Forest the whole time?”  
  
“Al!” Harry demanded, forcing his son to look at him. “Greyback killed James, right? You were there together and you managed to stop him from killing you, but not from killing James, right? Tell me that’s what happened!” And he was begging now because that was much easier to accept than suicide, even with everything else he knew.  
  
“You think I saved myself?” His own words seemed to quiet him. “I suppose I did in a way,” he said softly.  
  
“Al,” Harry pleaded, “what happened? Was it Greyback...”  
  
“Greyback wasn’t even there that night,” Al screamed suddenly. “I almost wish he had been, because if he’d raped me too maybe this would have all made sense.”  
  
Harry’s heart stopped beating. For a moment he thought he was going to be sick. “What did you just say?”  
  
Al’s anger was fading as swiftly as it had flared. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry,” he forced out around the forming tears. “I’m sorry,” he sobbed as Harry took him into his arms. “So sorry,” he said as he clung to Harry.  
  
Harry let Al hold onto him, but couldn’t quite manage to hug him back. Something had clicked in his brain. Something that made so much sense he felt sick with it.  
  
And then Al gave voice to it: “I killed him.”  
  
  
  
**Then**  
  


“Al,” James managed to force out, half a sob and half a groan. “Oh, God, Al.”  
  
Al didn’t even have time to blink before James was on him, pulling at his robes. James bit down on his collarbone, making him gasp in pain, the sudden awful intensity of it shaking him to the core. Al’s fingers came up to James’ hair of their own volition; James growled low in his throat and bit down harder, his fingers working their way down Al’s body.  
  
The hope blossoming in Al died. It wasn’t going to stop. Whatever James was going to talk about, it wouldn’t be this. He wasn’t going to stop feeling like Al owed him. He wasn’t going to stop thinking Al was his.  
  
“No,” Al said, bringing his hands up to shove James away – but he was met with stronger resistance than he’d expected. “No,” Al said again, shoving a little harder, but James was gasping in his ear, “One last time, Al, please, just one last time.”  
  
“NO!” Al screamed at last, the thing he’d wanted to tell his brother a hundred times but never voiced before tonight. He shoved James away as hard as he possibly could and then without knowing where it had come from his wand was in his hand. He couldn’t even hear the incantation that tore out of his throat, didn’t know what it was until he saw the flash of brilliant green and watched James crumple to the floor where he’d been standing.  
  
He didn’t understand even afterwards. He kept trying to wake James, over and over again, trying to imagine a life after killing his brother, his oldest friend, his dearest love. He tried to imagine being free.  
  
In the end it wasn’t real until the Mediwizards came to get them, and even then Al wasn’t quite sure. He could have been twelve years old again screaming at Madam Lefroy not to touch his brother, but this time no one was going to reassure him that James wasn’t going to be hurt because he already had been, and Al was responsible.  
  
  
**Now**  
  


Harry sedated Al again quietly before he left the room.  
  
His mind was still ringing. His heart was pounding, his stomach rebelling. His oldest son was a dead victim of rape and his other son was a murderer.  
  
Harry touched the pocket of his robes. In it was the letter Ginny had brought him hours before, the suicide note. A letter intended for James, but with no markings to indicate that. It could have been for anyone. Any of the family – he and Ginny had both been able to read it. So maybe it had been for them.  
  
_Maybe_ , said the part of Harry still trying to deny what he knew, _Greyback did kill him._  
  
Harry’s fingers tightened on the parchment.  
  
_Maybe Greyback came across them and killed James but Al forced him to run, just like you thought._  
  
What about the fact they were out there at all?  
  
_Or maybe they did make a suicide pact like you thought before, only it didn’t seem so romantic to Al when James was dead on the floor,_ Harry’s brain supplied. _Maybe they both wrote notes, or Al wrote one for both of them. Maybe it could say “we” instead of “I”._  
  
An _Obliviate_ and an altered Priori Incantatem, and it goes away. There will still be a scandal horrible enough to destroy the family name but Al will be safe.

  
_No, maybe we were wrong,_ came the sudden thought. _Maybe it IS James’ handwriting. Maybe Al went to the shack to stop him and Scorpius misinterpreted their struggling, then Greyback found them._  
  
Which would people believe?  
  
The Head Auror in Harry said, _Are you going to let your son’s murderer go free?_ Bellatrix Lestrange’s voice echoing down the years, taunting him about his failed Unforgiveable curse, _You have to mean them, Potter!_  
  
Harry would never be able to pretend to himself that Al hadn’t, even if only for that second, truly wanted James to die.

  
The Father in Harry said, _Are you going to let your son go to Azkaban with the people you’ve been locking away all your life waiting for him in there?_  
  
I never covered up anything in my life, Harry thought suddenly. I never lied, I never hid, I never deceived. Not in thirty years.  
  
_But he’s your son,_ the whisper came again. _He’s your son and if you do this you’ll never have to see their faces when they find out, not Ginny, not Lily, not anyone..._  
  
Harry closed his eyes against the barrage of images. Ginny and Lily screaming in denial. James and Al playing together at five and four respectively. James’ first broom and Al’s jealousy. James’ grin and Al’s reluctant smile. James’ dead body and the look in Al’s eyes now.  
  
Harry looked back through the glass into Al’s room. Before, whenever he’d looked into Al’s brilliant green eyes he’d always seen himself. He’d always looked into those eyes, his eyes, his mother’s eyes, and seen the ways he and Al were similar. But now Harry knew that in those eyes there were undiscovered stars making up constellations he hadn’t recognised, telling the story of a life very different from his own. Could he really rewrite the story of his son, who as it turned out was someone he didn’t even know? Could he protect Al at the expense of James?  
  
Better decide quickly. There isn’t much time.  
~fin


End file.
